The diary of a dedicated Ubuntu user that lucked into his dream job working on the Ubuntu team.

Monday, May 17, 2010

PyTask, written with Quickly and Quickly Widgets

On Saturday I received an email from a developer name Ryan. He was using Quickly and Quickly Widgets to create a task list application. CouchGrid seemed to suit, but due to the fact that there are no documents for it, he naturally had some questions about how to proceed. His project is called PyTask, and so far, I like it. It's a very simple set up, and just works in terms of data persistence and syncing across desktops.

Looking at the App, it was clear that there were a few more features that DictionaryGrid needs to really rock, though:

It needs a DateColumn to handle the "due" column. Users would want to set this with a gtk.Calendar widget.

It needs a ComboColumn to handle the "priority" column. Users would want to pick from a list of valid predefined priority values rather than free input text. This will be interesting to create a nice API for. I suppose application developers will want to pass in just a list of strings to the column. I think this is doable, but may take some refactoring as currently there is no intuitive way to get a hold of a column and set a property on it.

Both of these will require new GridFilter functionality. In fact, I have been waiting for a reason to refactor this part of Quickly Widgets, as the GridFilterRows are hard coded to use specific widgets, and this should be flexible.

Anyway, as it is, I am using PyTask, I hope Ryan get's it into a PPA soon. I like the simplicity. Ryan and I are currently collaborating on creating the new functionality in DictionaryGrid that PyTask needs. Open Source FTW!